Number Of Other Symptoms Research Articles

Association between tinnitus and somatoform disorders

Pathophysiological mechanisms are often unknown in patients suffering from “idiopathic” tinnitus, and the presence of other unexplained physical symptoms such as those seen in somatoform disorders can be assumed. This study investigates how often tinnitus exists in general medical out-patients with and without somatoform disorders. In an international study initiated by the World Health Organization (WHO), 1275 patients from 12 participating centers located in 11 different countries were examined by means of the WHO Somatoform Disorders Schedule. The overall prevalence of unexplained tinnitus was 11%; however, tinnitus was clearly more frequent among patients with somatization disorder (42%) or hypochondriacal disorder (27%). It was also more frequent than a great number of other symptoms considered to be typical of somatoform disorders. Tinnitus was also related to depression, anxiety, and to symptoms indicating autonomic arousal. Three possible conclusions are discussed: (i) tinnitus may be a somatoform symptom; (ii) the findings may indicate a substantial comorbidity of two different conditions; (iii) tinnitus and somatization may be linked through common mechanisms of arousal and somatic anxiety.

The Overlap Between Fibromyalgia and Inflammatory Rheumatic Disease

Fibromyalgia is a common condition that affects 2-4% of the population and is characterized by widespread pain, fatigue, and a number of other symptoms. There is evidence to suggest that fibromyalgia occurs much more frequently than expected in individuals with inflammatory rheumatic disorders. At present, it is not clear whether the inflammatory disorder leads to fibromyalgia or vice versa, but plausible mechanisms exist for either scenario. The coexistence of fibromyalgia and inflammatory disorders can lead to considerable difficulty in both diagnosis and treatment. In this article, the reasons that these two types of disorders can coexist are reviewed, and an approach to the diagnosis and management of individuals with components of both fibromyalgia and an inflammatory disorder is suggested.

Deep dyslexia: A case study of connectionist neuropsychology

Abstract Deep dyslexia is an acquired reading disorder marked by the Occurrence of semantic errors (e.g. reading RIVER as “ocean”). In addition, patients exhibit a number of other symptoms, including visual and morphological effects in their errors, a part-of-speech effect, and an advantage for concrete over abstract words. Deep dyslexia poses a distinct challenge for cognitive neuropsychology because there is little understanding of why such a variety of symptoms should co-occur in virtually all known patients. Hinton and Shallice (1991) replicated the co-occurrence of visual and semantic errors by lesioning a recurrent connectionist network trained to map from orthography to semantics. Although the success of their simulations is encouraging. there is little understanding of what underlying principles are responsible for them. In this paper we evaluate and, where possible, improve on the most important design decisions made by Hinton and Shallice, relating to the task, the network architecture, the training procedure, and the testing procedure. We identify four properties of networks that underly their ability to reproduce the deep dyslexic symptom-complex: distributed orthographic and semantic representations, gradient descent learning, attractors for word meanings, and greater richness of concrete vs. abstract semantics. The first three of these are general connectionist principles and the last is based on earlier theorising. Taken together, the results demonstrate the usefulness of a connectionist approach to understanding deep dyslexia in particular, and the viability of connectionist neuropsychology in general.

Methods for assessing the resistance of raspberry genotypes to Phytophthora root rot

Zoospores and agar discs of the fungus causing raspberry root rot (Phytophthora fragariae) were used as inoculum to assess the resistance of raspberry genotypes in pot experiments. High zoospore concentrations resulted in more severe symptoms than low concentrations. There was a strong correlation between the results obtained with zoospores and with colonized agar discs as inocula. although disease was generally more severe with the former. The severity of root rot was correlated with a number of other symptoms, in particular growth reductions, stem lesions and leaf wilting, and some of these symptoms could possibly be used as measures of resistance. There was no evidence of physiological specialization with the range of isolates and raspberry genotypes used. Pot tests in general gave results which matched reported resistances in the field, and could be used to assess the resistance of breeding lines and selections.

The epidemiology of headache among children with brain tumor

In this report we present aspects of the epidemiology of headache (i.e., pain in the head, face, ear, or neck) among children with brain tumors. The data are derived from the 3,291 subjects in the Childhood Brain Tumor Consortium databank. Overall, 62% of the children with brain tumors experienced chronic or frequent headaches prior to their first hospitalization: 58% of children with supratentorial tumors and 70% of children with infratentorial tumors. The relative frequency of headache increased through age 7 and then leveled off regardless of tumor location. For children under age 5, headache rarely had a duration of more than 1 year prior to hospitalization. Among children over age 4, headache duration of at least one year was significantly greater for supratentorial than for infratentorial tumors. Children with a brain tumor and headache had a different distribution of symptoms and neurologic signs than those without headache. Tumor location and headache status were interactively associated with the presence of other symptoms and neurologic signs. Children with headache had a greater number of other symptoms and neurologic signs. Regardless of tumor location among children with headache, nausea or vomiting, papilledema, and hypoactive tendon reflexes were more frequent, while upper extremity weakness, optic atrophy, and irritability were less frequent. Diplopia, coma, stiff neck, anesthesia or hypesthesia, pupillary abnormalities, and abnormalities of personality, academic performance, or speech were associated with headache in children with supratentorial tumors. No specific symptoms or neurologic signs were associated with headache in children with infratentorial tumors. Supratentorial craniopharyngioma, ependymoma, and protoplasmic astrocytoma were associated with significantly high rates of headache as was infratentorial pilocytic astrocytoma.

Adaptation symptoms and impairment symptoms in Broca's aphasia

Abstract A fundamental distinction between two kinds of symptoms is described. Impairment symptoms are the direct output of a damaged system. Adaptation symptoms are behavioural abnormalities that are the result of a patient adapting to impairment. The way in which this distinction is applied to the phenomenon of agrammatism in sentence production is explained and the supporting evidence is reviewed. The basic assumption here is that agrammatic (telegraphic) speech results from the strategic choice for elliptical expressions. If no such choice is made, paragrammatic output will be produced. The impairment-adaptation dichotomy is then applied to a number of other symptoms of Broca's aphasia: dysprosody, low rate of speech, reduced variety of grammatical form, low performance on sentence repetition and auditory comprehension.

Organization of depressive symptoms in the elderly population: hierarchical patterns and Guttman scales.

Survey data from the US-UK Cross-National Geriatric Community Study was examined for hierarchical patterns in the organization of depressive symptomatology in the elderly population. A pattern similar to that previously found in a younger sample (Sturt, 1981) was evident. Low prevalence symptoms were associated with increased numbers of other symptoms. The poor fit of high-frequency somatic symptoms in this hierarchy was explained by their low specificity for depression in an elderly population. Derived Guttman scales of somatic and affective symptoms suggested, nonetheless, that such low-specificity symptoms may be clinically significant in the ontogeny of depression.

Effects of physical training on blood pressure in hypertension.

Although initial studies did not allow conclusions on the effects of physical training on blood pressure in hypertension because the groups studied were too small, and because of a mixture of hypertension types, body weight changes and lack of controls, recent studies are not rendered difficult to interpret by such deficiencies. Such studies seem now to allow the conclusion that physical training lowers blood pressure in borderline hypertension by decreasing heart rate and cardiac output, but not peripheral resistance. It is noteworthy that increases of heart rate and cardiac output, as well as a number of other symptoms of increased activity of the central sympathetic nervous system, are characteristic of a large group of subjects with borderline hypertension, and it seems that these subjects are particularly good responders to physical training. Recent studies suggest that physical activity, as well as electric nerve stimulation and acupuncture, sends specific afferent nerve signals to the central nervous system resulting afterwards in increased pain threshold, and lower activity in the central sympathetic nervous system, resulting in lower heart rate and blood pressure. These effects seem to be mediated via endorphin release in the central nervous system because they can be mimicked by local administration of these substances and inhibited by naloxone. It seems an interesting possibility that physical training lowers blood pressure and other expressions of increased sympathetic nervous system activity via such a mechanism. Further studies along this line may be rewarding from different aspects.